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Open research questions in Rhetoric and Communication Studies

358 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 2,425 Rhetoric and Communication Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The paper identifies a gap in understanding how leaders like Trump combine democratic and authoritarian tendencies in their communication styles. It highlights the need to move beyond binary classifications of leadership as either democratic or authoritarian. The study notes that prior research has not fully explored the complexities of leadership communication styles.

    When autocratic behaviours and “democratic” language characteristics converge: an exploration of Trump’s 100-day Michigan speech · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a gap in the understanding of how the media presents the war and its impact on collective memory. Prior work has examined the media coverage of the war, but has not fully explored the necropolitical discourse of collective remembering. The paper aims to fill this gap by examining the photographs published in The New York Times.

    Collective remembering and necropolitical discourse: The American War in Vietnam commemorated · 2025 · DOI

  • Examples provided are limited in scope due to space constraints. The essay does not provide documentary work to substantiate claims about specific leaders or contexts.

    Leadership on the Line: Gaslighting, Adaptive Leadership, and the Battle for the Soul of Democracy · 2025 · DOI

  • Further empirical research on the prevalence and impact of gaslighting across different political systems is needed. Studies should explore how adaptive leadership can be effectively implemented in various democratic contexts.

    Leadership on the Line: Gaslighting, Adaptive Leadership, and the Battle for the Soul of Democracy · 2025 · DOI

  • Power with rather than over each other is what promises political identification and mobilization against systems of domination and strategies of care and survival when institutional resources are scarce and QTAPI identities must constantly defend against their erasure.

    Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics. V. Jo Hsu · 2025 · DOI

  • Jo Hsu’s Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics in novel and expansive directions, returning attention to understudied and diminished accounts of Asian Americans who refuse able-bodied, meritocratic model minoritarianism as it is reproduced in the American heteronormative nuclear family.

    Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics. V. Jo Hsu · 2025 · DOI

  • Rhetorical ingenuity was devised in feminist rhetorics of health and medicine to address situations where access to the Aristotelian means of persuasion is lacking.

    Legitimate Interests: Antiabortion Legislation, Medical Science, and the Need for Rhetorical Ingenuity · 2025 · DOI

  • There can be no mutual belief between the S on the TV screen and the H in the armchair (phone-ins and so forth are scarcely a remedy).

    Co-operation and non-co-operation: Ethical and political aspects of pragmatics · 1987 · DOI

  • assent is warranted—even to the per- spective of generations yet unborn—then public discourse extends itself in its widest capacity.

    Public discourse · 1987 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the literature in understanding how emotional framing is used to strengthen collective emotional resilience. The study highlights the need for critical consideration of the ethical dilemmas of emotional governance.

    Emotional Framing of Emotional Deviants as a Political Strategy for Strengthening Collective Emotional Resilience · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a research gap in understanding the cognitive mechanisms of failed persuasion. The study highlights the need to consider the role of hope and anger in decision-making.

    Project Fear: Emotions, Game Theory, and Failed Persuasion in Ancient Greek and Contemporary Politics · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the literature on post-truth politics and Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly in the context of political discourse and war. The study highlights the need for critical analysis of political discourse and the importance of verifying information before amplifying it.

    EMOTIONAL WEAPONS AND MANUFACTURING THE ENEMY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S POST-TRUTH WAR RHETORIC · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research could explore the application of the proposed method in various contexts. Future research could investigate the effectiveness of the method in developing students' rhetorical self-awareness. Future research could examine the relationship between character strengths and communicative abilities.

    Ethos – between vir bonus and VIA: Virtue ethics in contemporary rhetorical education · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to adapt classical virtue ethics to contemporary practical rhetoric. There is a lack of methods that integrate classical virtue ethics with contemporary positive psychology in rhetorical education.

    Ethos – between vir bonus and VIA: Virtue ethics in contemporary rhetorical education · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in research on accusatory rhetoric. The study highlights the need to understand how public accusations emerge and crystallize in a networked media ecology.

    “Who said ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’?”: Crystallizing a public accusation across media platforms · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of studies on personification in political press language. The need for an integrative approach to analyzing personification in political press language.

    Personification in political press language · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies the challenge of implementing dialogic communication ethics in practice, particularly in contexts marked by power imbalances and social inequalities. It notes the difficulty of navigating ethical complexity in pluralistic communicative environments. The paper also highlights the need for further empirical and pedagogical application of the proposed framework.

    Dialogic communication ethics in practice: Navigating ethical engagement in contemporary discourse · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in existing ethical codes, which often remain vague regarding questions of communication ethics. It highlights the need for a framework that can provide a principled guide for navigating ethical complexity in pluralistic communicative environments. The paper also notes that existing research often focuses on profession-specific behavioral norms rather than communication ethics.

    Dialogic communication ethics in practice: Navigating ethical engagement in contemporary discourse · 2026 · DOI

  • Retrospective interviews with CT believers confirm a degree of conceptual “fossilization” (Danesi) but it still remains an open question whether this is the result of neurophysiological processes, as posited by Danesi, or of socio-emotive benefits, such as emotional reassurance in identity building.

    Metaphorical Blending in Conspiracy Theory Discourses: a German Case Study · 2025 · DOI

  • The study identifies a methodological challenge in understanding how marginalized people join the public from beyond barriers. The research gap is related to the lack of understanding of how the public forms in marginalized communicative cultures.

    Toward the Formation of the Public in a Marginalized Communicative Culture: Analyzing The Long Road of Woman's Memory · 2024 · DOI

  • Because of the ways in which it relies on separation and identification to generate enjoyment for its subjects, strategies like satire and empathy are insufficient to respond to sadistic conservative discourses, but rhetoric’s capacity to destabilize identities and undermine certainty remain promising contributions to engaged scholarship.

    Liberal Tears and the Rogue’s Yarn of Sadistic Conservativism · 2022 · DOI

  • For differently suited intellectuals, writing a divisive book on the Covid-19 pandemic not even 100 days into it, when lack of data, research and certainty is still symptomatic and disinformation is rampant, would resemble something like gross recklessness.

    Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World Slavoj Žižek – 2020 · 2020 · DOI

  • This introduction to a special section of the May 2019 issue of International Affairs, on ‘The dynamics of dissent’, develops the concept of behavioural contestation and outlines triggers and effects of this hitherto under-researched expression of dissent.

    The dynamics of dissent: when actions are louder than words · 2019 · DOI

  • Celeste Michelle Condit's Angry Public Rhetorics: Global Relations and Emotion in the Wake of 9/11 is a complex and challenging contribution to the understudied area of public emotion that charts the course for an arduous but rewarding journey toward a greater synthesis between the study of human biological and material existence and the study of our symbolic world.

    Angry Public Rhetorics: Global Relations and Emotion in the Wake of 9/11 · 2019 · DOI

  • The analysis reveals that threateners use myriad rhetorical strategies to convey interpersonal meaning (Martin and Rose, 2003) and take stances that both strengthen and weaken their apparent level of commitment, thus contradicting the one-sidedness of threatening language ideologies and demonstrating the need for further research on stancetaking in threatening discourse.

    Identifying interpersonal stance in threatening discourse: An appraisal analysis · 2011 · DOI

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358 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 2,425 Rhetoric and Communication Studies papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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